


It's Been One Week

by SoullessSubstance



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Gen, Spoilers, spoilers through 2x10
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 03:26:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7601569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoullessSubstance/pseuds/SoullessSubstance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex has been avoiding Strand for a week since their last call.  She'd been frustrated, sure, but this is ridiculous.   Strand goes to confront her about her silence.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Been One Week

Legionnaires’ disease. That was the last thing they’d discussed. Legionnaires’ disease at the Sagamore Hotel. She’d gotten frustrated towards the end of their conversation. “Thanks. A lot.” Her last words to him, tone clipped and… Exasperated. That’s the word he’s looking for. He should have picked up on it at the time, rather than in retrospect. Perhaps he had. He can’t really remember. He’d been tired and frustrated himself, wishing she’d stop questioning every aspect of his conclusions. She’s a journalist, he thinks, of course she’s going to question everything. That’s how it’s always been.

It’s been nearly a week since then. She hasn’t been answering his calls. He stopped by the studio to try and catch her, but Nic had sent him away. “She’s just busy. I’ll have her call you when we need you,” he’d said. He wanted to ask what she could possibly be so busy with that she hasn’t talked to him in a week, but brushes it off. Nic isn’t someone he really wants to upset right now. Is she upset with me? he wonders idly, For not considering the possibility that the various music-related cases we’ve encountered might be somehow related? That’s ridiculous. “She’s working on some stuff for TANIS,” Nic had elaborated. It took him a moment to realize that the other producer meant HIS podcast and not the fraudulent “psychic” with whom he prefers not to associate. He’d prefer SHE didn’t associate with him either, but she’s a grown woman who can choose the people with whom she speaks thank-you-very-much (as she’d reminded him a handful of times, whenever he tries to warn her off of someone who may be a danger to her. He only does it to protect her. Of course that’s all it is. For it to have anything to do with the slight empty ache he feels would be ridiculous. It would be ridiculous for him to feel such a thing at all. He really should go to the doctor and get that checked. Could be a heart defect. He makes a note to ask Ruby to schedule something for him).

He's back in the office now. She hasn’t called yet, and he thinks Nic would probably tell him if something were horribly wrong, but… Something about the whole situation feels… Wrong. He can’t quite place the issue. He’s been having trouble sleeping (more than usual), and hasn’t been able to focus on his research. This is ridiculous, Richard, he tells himself. But she’s never shut him out before. Not for this long. Not more than a couple hours, really. She’s always shown up with a hot cup of tea, ready to talk through whatever disagreement they’d had. And even if she is upset with him, why does it matter? It’ll make his life simpler. It’ll take a while, of course, but things will settle down for him. On this side of things, at least. It would leave him free to focus on… More important things. Finding Coralee. Figuring out who is following him and why. Debunking cases. Which he’s already doing, but he’ll be able to do it ALONE, without anyone to second guess him, or to bring up ridiculous theories for him to put time and effort into. He’d be alone. No one prying into his personal life. No one to call when he needs something looked into. No one to keep him company on his way to a job site. No one to eat with on the road, no one to get coffee with while discussing the details of a case. He shakes his head. Ridiculous. He doesn’t need someone with him. He’s more than capable of working alone. He’d done it for years.

But here he is, a cup of coffee from her favorite café in one hand and a paper takeout bag in the other, determined to speak with her before he leaves. He ignores the stares of the interns, the faint whispers that the whir of a server can’t quite drown out, and makes his way to her office. He finds it empty, but enters anyway. He sets the coffee and food on her desk and makes himself comfortable, pulling out his tablet so he can go through emails while he waits. Most of them are junk – easily explained instances of paranormal activity, a few requests from radio or news stations for an interview. He’s rewatching a video from a particularly well staged ‘haunting’ for the third time (just to make sure he has the details down) when he hears the office door open. “Miss Raegan,” he says, not looking up from the screen. He can see her feet in the doorway where she’s stopped, perfectly frozen.

“What are you doing here?” she asks after a minute, resuming the walk to her desk. She otherwise ignores him and his offerings, going to her computer to log in.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” he asks bluntly, finally putting away his tablet and turning to her just in time to see her shoulders jolt to accompany a silent scoff. “You haven’t answered your phone, you haven’t been accessible in the office, you’ve been ignoring my emails. This can’t possibly still be about the alleged connection that you insist on pursuing. So what? What is it?”

She ignores him for a few moments, the office silent save the clacking of computer keys as she types out an email that he doesn’t bother reading.

“Alex-“

“Don’t Alex me,” she grumbles, hitting ‘send’ with a more forceful click than was strictly necessary.

“What has gotten into you? Is the connection really it? I understand that you want to make connections, but this is- this is beyond what is reasonable. If that’s not what this is, then tell me. What is this about?”

She closes out of her email window, shuts the screen of her laptop, and finally turns her chair to face him. Her face is uncharacteristically unreadable. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me, Richie?” she says with a slight snarl.

He recoils, brow furrowing in confusion for a moment. Richie? Since when did she call him Richie? … No one’s called him that since… Since he was a teenager. The Coates boys. Somerville. He realizes what she’s talking about, and it hits him all at once. His blood runs cold, and he feels like he’s been stricken. “Bobby Mames,” he says once he’s composed himself. His voice is back to its usual even drawl. 

“Bobby Mames,” she confirms, glaring at him with her arms crossed. Despite her posture, she doesn’t look particularly… Angry. That’s the surface emotion, sure, but just below that is thinly veiled… Fear? Hurt? Confusion? A little bit of all of them, he decides. Is she… Afraid of him? His eyes narrow a little as he tries to work things out.

“How did you-“

“Wesley Coates.”

“What do you-…?”

“You led them to the body. You knew where it was. How?”

“I don’t-“

“Don’t tell me you don’t know. How. Did. You. Know?”

“Alex, it’s not that-“

“Not that simple? Yes, Dr Strand, it is! How did you know where to find the body?” There’s a pause. “Did you do it? … Did you kill Bobby Mames?”

“I don’t- It’s been a long time. Forty years. I don’t remember.”

“You don’t remember? You, Dr Richard Strand, who has never forgotten a case detail in his life, don’t remember? Try again.”

“No, I don’t remember, Alex,” he insists, “I don’t think I killed him. And besides, didn’t the police catch his killer…? Gary Bishop?”

“The police aren’t perfect. Did you kill Bobby Mames?”

“… No. I didn’t kill Bobby Mames.”

“Then how did you know?” she asks again. He’s getting frustrated, but his way to the door has been blocked by her chair, so he couldn’t escape if he tried. 

“I don’t- I don’t know, Alex! I was- I can’t be sure. Maybe… Maybe I’d ridden past it before. The body. Maybe I’d- I’d sort of registered at the time that it was vaguely human shaped. Maybe… Maybe I was just subconsciously drawn back there… A sort of… A pull. To check it out again. To see what it was. Maybe I’d marked it as something interesting enough to warrant looking into it.”

“A pull?”

“Yes, a pull.”

“Like Tannis Braun.”

It isn’t a question. He knows it isn’t, but he can’t let her think there was anything supernatural about the incident. He’s nothing like Tannis Braun. There’s no such thing as psychic ability. To suggest that HE may be a psychic is absolutely absurd. Just like the strength of the pull had been absurd. And just like the shadowy figures he and his sister had thought they’d seen were absurd.

“No. It was just my subconscious guiding me back to a place I’d been dozens of times and vaguely realized had changed in some subtle way since Mames had gone missing. There was nothing… Nothing mystical about it.”

“Then why didn’t you report it to the police? Why aren’t you the one who led them to the body? Why is Wesley Coates’s name the one on file?”

“I was seventeen, Alex. About to go off to college. I couldn’t allow myself to be forced to stay behind because of a murder investigation.” And because he really doesn’t know how he’d known where to go. No. It’s not that I don’t remember, he corrects himself, It’s that the set of events I remember are impossible, and therefore not what happened.

She backs down slightly, but keeps her arms crossed tight while she tries to come up with more questions. “Why… Didn’t you just tell me…?” she finally asks, looking up at him with as indifferent an expression as she can manage. But he can see her eyes. Those big, expressive brown eyes of hers… She looks… Hurt, above everything. 

“I didn’t want- this. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want you thinking I’d killed him. I didn’t want you blowing it out of proportion. It happened 40 years ago, Alex. There’s nothing bigger going on here. It was a- a freak accident. I don’t know what happened or why, but it’s over now, so it doesn’t matter,” he says with some resolve.

“It’s over now. Like the black tapes are over? In that they’re all in the past, but unresolved?” she shoots back. He can feel his jaw clenching and unclenching. “Why wouldn’t you keep looking into it? Are you worried about what you think you’re going to find? Is it because you know there’s nothing to disprove?”

“Alex, that’s not-… It’s none of your business. You or your listeners.”

“I’m not recording. This is just between us,” she says, voice suddenly much softer, “I feel like I should be recording this for the podcast, but I’d rather talk it out so we can pick and choose what to say later. … You should have told me. You may not think this is important or relevant, but it is. How can you not see that…? Even if- Even if you wanted to keep it off the record… You could’ve trusted me.”

Strand’s mind goes blank for a fraction of a second. Then it pulls up all the instances where that’s not been the case. He can feel his face burning with anger, twisting into what he imagines must be an ugly snarl. “I could’ve trusted you? Are you joking right now? I could’ve trusted you? Miss Reagan, I should hardly need remind you of the numerous times you’ve proven otherwise. You released information – personal information – to the public-“

“Which you agreed I could share if it became relevant,” she counters.

“You eavesdropped on me. Recorded conversations without my permission.”

It’s her turn to go silent. She looks stricken. “I thought… I thought we were past that,” she says quietly, her voice shaky and small. Strand almost feels bad. Almost. “I already apologized. Profusely. … Was that not enough?”

“You broke the law, Alex. Not even just your- your ethical codes. Which have been broken a number of times.” He wants to stop. He wants to tell her that he forgives her. But they’re already this far. He can’t just back down now. Can he…?

She tries to look angry. She tries to pretend he’s not breaking her down. But she looks so small… So tired, so hurt. “I have a lot of work to get done,” she says quietly. She isn’t looking at him anymore as she moves her chair out of the way. “Please leave.”

“Alex, I-“

“Get. Out.” Is she…? She is. 

“Alex… Please, stop crying. It’s… Unbecoming.” She huffs out a wry laugh, scrubbing furiously at her eyes. 

“I’m sorry… I just- This is a lot to process. And you’re not making it any easier,” she says once she’s calmed down a little.

“I know. I’m sorry.” There, he’d said it. Alex looks shocked. “You’re right. I should have talked to you. Off the record. It’s… A personal black tape. I keep it separate from the others. I know what I think can explain it, but it doesn’t quite piece together. There are still some uncertainties that I don’t quite understand. … It’s the second Black Tape case.”

“The first being the shadow people you and Cheryl saw?”

There’s a pause. “Yes.” 

Another pause. “Is that why you’re so doggedly skeptical…?”

An even longer pause. “Yes. … If the paranormal doesn’t exist, then neither childhood incident could really have happened. They can be explained away. … My father’s… Eccentricities can be explained away.”

It’s not something he’d ever wanted to admit to her. To himself. She can see how uncomfortable he is.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I won’t pry anymore. Not into that. Not until you’re ready.” Strand is shocked now. 

“That’s a first.” She laughs quietly. She flashes him a watery smile. Everything’s going to be okay. For now.


End file.
